I'm watching the discs, but not renting. I bought them when they dropped in price on Amazon.com, simply based on my sister's recommendation. I do that sometimes with her stronger recommendations because I know that even if I don't end up liking it enough to keep it, she'll want to have it and the purchase will be worthwhile. Of course, it doesn't work out in her favor very often, since we have pretty similar tastes.

Just watched “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” Blu-ray. As with the first one if you like Disney movies they’ve hit it out of the park with this one again. The story is different since she’s already a pixie it kicks off right into the main adventure.

The video quality is top notch and as is most of the animation though in this one there are a couple of scenes where it look like they got lazy in the background. The audio is also great though not much going on in the surrounds. However the music and effects up front are ambient enough that it still fills the room with sound.

Watched the “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” special edition Blu-ray last night. Still a good movie but overall it didn’t stand the test of time for me as well as I thought it would. I guess I’m getting use the frantic pace of more recent movies because some of the family scenes had me reaching for the fast forward button. However, I still liked most of the movie.

The video quality of this was touted as really good but I’m not seeing it. Picture is decent but there’s a lot of graininess I’m not use to seeing in the few Blu-rays I’ve watched. I mean “Patton” and “The Longest Day” looked better. Colours were pretty muted by comparison to others I’ve scene. I didn’t have time to check out my standard def copy to see how it compared.

Audio quality was about the same. It was respectable but nothing to grab your attention which actually worked for the more subdued nature of this film. Didn’t notice much going on with the surrounds and the subwoofer was only mildly engaged.

I had bought this outright based on the number “top lists” it was on but this is one case I should have rented first because unless the standard def version looks a lot worse on the big screen I would have passed on this as a Blu-ray.

So the subwoofer didn't do anything in this scene that High-Def Digest talks about?:

Quote:

The scene where Roy Neary first encounters a UFO in his pick-up truck still delivers some of the most intense low bass I've ever heard on a home theater mix. Cranking up the high-res tracks, my subwoofer just about vibrated right off the floor -- this scene, along with the mothership climax, is a true test of any home theater rig's mettle. Don't turn up the volume on this Blu-ray edition of 'Close Encounters' unless your speakers can handle it.

I don’t think I saw the same movie as that reviewer. The bass output was just on the margin where my M80s could have handled everything and I don’t think I would have known the difference.

As for “some of the most intense low bass I’ve ever heard on a home theater mix.” all I can say is WTFO. Earlier in the evening I had moved and recalibrated everything and wanted to test out some movies I hadn’t put in since the apartment. I can say all 3 I tried “Apollo 13,” “War of the Worlds” and “Sky Captain and the World fo Tomorrow” all had much more intense bass than anything “Close Encounters . . .” comes close to. I mean not even in the same league.

Which brings me to something else I realized is that now I need to go back and watch all the movies I saw in the apartment because now I can really listen to them.

I’ll pop in my standard def copy later when I fire up the projector to see if the PQ or the Blu-ray is worth the upgrade. I’m also going to recheck the audio because I just checked Blu-ray.com and they also say the bass is “phenomenal.” Not sure why I’m not feeling it.

Well I stand semi-corrected on the bass in “Close Encounters . . .”. There is a lot more bass in the scenes Charles quoted than I realized. However, not much of it was below 40Hz which after watching some very bass heavy scenes earlier made it feel thin.

The low-pass filter on my Buttkicker amp it set at 40Hz. I put my foot on it and played the scene with the mailboxes and there was almost nothing. I put my hand in front of the subwoofer and it was going crazy. So I cut out both subwoofer channels in the configuration menu and played the scene again and notice only a very slight drop in the bass with just the M80s playing it.

So while there is plenty of bass above 40Hz it just didn’t have the feel (even with the Buttkicker off) of movies like “Terminator: Salvation,” “Apollo 13,” “War of the Worlds,” “Star Wars III,” “LOTR FOTR” . . . .

Also popped in the standard def DVD and didn’t see any great difference than in the Blu-ray but I didn’t spend a lot of time checking. Also at least the bass portion of the audio track on the standard def version seemed the same as the Blu-ray. However, I didn’t listen extensively to see if other aspects were improved much.